Facebook, we need to talk.
Apparently Woman Action Media (WAM!) has you looking out for gender-based hate speech. That’s good to hear, but why focus so strongly on hate speech against women and not men? Does “hate speech” include speech regarding glorification of violence against men?
For those of you who have not seen the news today, Facebook gave in to pressure from a collection of women’s groups to do three things. Their message has been copied verbatim from the WAM! Open Letter to Facebook, signed by over one hundred organizations and individuals.
1. Recognize speech that trivializes or glorifies violence against girls and women as hate speech and make a commitment that you will not tolerate this content.
If you are an anti-feminist (or if you think that a girl who got drunk and regretted sleeping with a guy was not actually raped), does this mean you are trivializing violence against girls and women? If so, your words are not to be tolerated, because your thoughts are not allowed.
2. Effectively train moderators to recognize and remove gender-based hate speech.
Why does this remind me of a book about a farm that had animals that could talk?
3. Effectively train moderators to understand how online harassment differently affects women and men, in part due to the real-world pandemic of violence against women.
Harassment for men and women on the Internet is defined by the groups who support this letter. This is their answer and I have questions for that answer.
I will not dismiss concerns of hate speech, but shouldn’t men’s groups have a say? Shouldn’t the women’s groups show us what they have done to prevent hate speech against men? And Facebook, what specific changes to your policy do you envision? Specifically, will your policies be just as vague as the language in this letter?
The offensive content feminists intend to get rid of concerns media glorifying or trivializing violence against women or rape. Feminists are also accusing Facebook of biased moderation.
These pages and images are approved by your moderators, while you regularly remove content such as pictures of women breastfeeding, women post-mastectomy and artistic representations of women’s bodies. In addition, women’s political speech, involving the use of their bodies in non-sexualized ways for protest, is regularly banned as pornographic, while pornographic content – prohibited by your own guidelines – remains.
I can’t find porn on Facebook and believe me I looked. However, what I did discover are models who reveal cleavage and bikini butts. I can only believe in the absence of feminist citation, that what I am observing is the normal interaction of both sexes interacting in a social environment doing as humans do. If cave-people had the Internet would they not show a bit of leg peeking through their Mastodon skin coat? I dug and now I’m confused even more. I need more data!
Rape, it’s glorification? My experience has been that people who post images, videos and text that promote rape and violence are doing it because they know the value of shock. If you conflate their intention to deceive with their presentation of an untruthful reality you rob yourself of the truth. It is tempting for some to believe as they say, but in the end those that do are denied what is actually real. I doubt real rapists are publicly announcing their desire to rape. I want numbers because I am curious.
How many examples of hate speech that WAM! and affiliates moan about lead to proven incidences of rape or domestic violence? Is this project making the world a better place for you and me? Ask Facebook.
Indeed, Facebook’s ad revenue was attacked and it was attacked by the cluster bomb that WAM! deployed.
To this end, we are calling on Facebook users to contact advertisers whose ads on Facebook appear next to content that targets women for violence, to ask these companies to withdraw from advertising on Facebook until you take the above actions to ban gender-based hate speech on your site. (We will be raising awareness and contacting advertisers on Twitter using the hashtag #FBrape.)
Facebook’s revenue is being cut off by people who are only out to help the “fairer” sex. After all, the fairer sex outnumber men on Facebook, so of course they are going to listen.
This is a call to action to all MHRAs and women’s organizations to allow men to speak in this discussion without “appropriate editing.” Why do we deserve what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, well you know the answer already.
I want you to look at this experiment that took me thirty seconds. Here are the results for “I hate men,” “men are evil” or “men suck” when I searched for them in Facebook.
- http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=660529757307186&set=a.111990072161160.15768.111962042163963&type=1&relevant_count=1
- http://www.facebook.com/mensuck?fref=ts
- http://www.facebook.com/pages/men-are-the-source-of-all-evil-or-shall-i-just-say-CS/110868285616325
- http://www.facebook.com/pages/All-men-are-evil-and-will-act-upon-their-vicious-nature-if-given-the-chance/120775494673908
- http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-Hate-Men/121104277931041
- http://www.facebook.com/pages/i-hate-men/123497954342168
- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Men-are-Evil/388676584573526
Facebook moderators do not remove this content even though the hatred is overt. WAM! and company currently number over one hundred, so where is our mainstream media coverage? Oh that’s right, like all oppressed groups that have a tiny membership, the “fairer sex” has it.
Choose one or be lit up under a spotlight shining on your theater of bigotry. Hate speech against either sex is not allowed, or, hate speech against both sexes is allowed.
I can put up with this but I’m not going to.
Addendum: More extreme links have surfaced depicting men in uncomfortable pornographic positions or as the targets of hate speech or violence. The following links are not safe for work, so do not click them if you are below legal age to view them in your jurisdiction, or are uncomfortable viewing such material. Feminists complain about this material when it targets women, but do not mention content like this in their crackdown on hate speech.
Pages
- https://www.facebook.com/pages/Castrate-decapitate-the-misogynistic-pigs-at-the-head-of-Faceshit-LULZ/289681341143480
- https://www.facebook.com/pages/Operation-Castration-Domination/120988944593314
- https://www.facebook.com/FemdomJeanette (exposed penises being stepped on)
- https://www.facebook.com/pages/Men-should-be-Shrunk-and-kept-in-Jars/241193324293
- https://www.facebook.com/pages/Girls-beating-up-their-boyfriends/414662217432?fref=ts
- https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-aiYjqnsA1Xc/UaJ4ljXm8OI/AAAAAAAAAIc/ECBAY-BZiXA/w851-h411-no/Beating+up+your+boyfriend-FB+page.jpg
Photos
Woman physically abusing man
Woman physically abusing woman
Addendum 2: Thankfully some of the links above have been breaking since the misandric content was being removed, no doubt from MHRAs reporting the spotlighted material. This gives some points to Facebook, but we are not out of the woods yet. Facebook has still removed content from AVFM’s page that merely challenged false rape statistics without violating community guidelines, which shows we still have work to do.
